SEPTEMBER 13, 1937

HYDE PARK, Sunday—Such a busy two days as we have had! My husband has mixed business with pleasure, and as far as I am concerned I think we will have to consider these two days as almost purely social!

I was at the Poughkeepsie station yesterday morning at a quarter after seven to meet Mrs. Henry Morgenthau, Junior, who was delayed on her return trip from Honolulu and spent more days than she had expected to spend in San Francisco. She came back with the Secretary to our little cottage and had breakfast on the porch and told me something of their trip.

The weather has been so glorious that by ten o'clock Mr. Henry Hooker and I started out for a long ride through the woods. The change from warm weather to sunshine with a snap in the air seemed to affect the horses as it did us, and even my meek and quiet Dot behaved like a young and kittenish girl. Every tree which had been blown down by the storm and lay anywhere near the road was subject to inspection and in one place where they had begun to chop a big fallen tree up we jumped clear across the road and I decided that the spirit of the tree must have communicated with Dot and complained at the way it was being treated! She was certainly trying to tell me that there was something wrong at that particular spot.

A few people who have served on a voluntary committee with me in an effort to be helpful to the Arthurdale, West Virginia community, met here at noon. Mr. Bernard Baruch was with us for the first time since his return, but he left us and went to the big house for a private luncheon with my husband, while I had all the rest of the household for a picnic on our cottage porch. Jimmy cooked the chops and one of the gentlemen seemed to think it quite extraordinary that I should expect my son to do his share of the picnic cooking!

Secretary and Mrs. Morgenthau had their annual newspaper picnic last night and I think it is the party which my husband enjoys as much as any other event in the early autumn days up here. "Hughie" and his two colored aides, gave us grand singing and good music all evening. My husband called the numbers for the Virginia Reel and everyone stood up under the strain until the last couple had gone through the figures. I feel very proud of my pupils, for I really started them back on this strenuous dance and they all seem to enjoy it and do it better each time I see them perform!

One of my fellow columnists, Joseph Fort Newton, has sent me a little book in which some if his writings are recorded. It is a book to be picked up and read now and then, as its title: "Living Every Day" implies. One little line struck me this Sunday morning as a sermon in itself: "To me religion is a celebration of life." I don't know how many people think of their religion in that particular way, but I am sure if we did it would make religion a very much more living thing than it is to most of us.